Taco Bell has decided to start using the word "protein" instead of "meat" on a special, new meat-heavy menu. Could this be the first step toward acclimating us to fake and synthetic meat — I mean, protein? »6/24/13 3:48pm 6/24/13 3:48pm

Okay, technically the 189,819-letter IUPAC name of titin, the largest known protein which is responsible for passive elasticity of muscle, is a verbal formula rather than an actual word, but it's dizzying to imagine all those syllables tumbling out of a human mouth. Well, now you don't have to imagine it—provided… »11/17/12 9:30am 11/17/12 9:30am

Biologically speaking, it isn't that hard to create very simple, one-celled organisms. But the leap to multicellular life requires many factors to line up just perfectly. Now a new hypothesis suggests we wouldn't even be here without some well-timed erosion. »6/17/12 5:05pm 6/17/12 5:05pm

It's hard to imagine an organism much simpler than the hydra. It doesn't have brains, hearts, or eyes - it's basically just tentacles with a mouth attached. And yet these simple creatures pull of biological feats no other animal can. »3/05/12 3:56pm 3/05/12 3:56pm

Bacteria pretty much have nano-sized versions of anything humans can come up with. That list somehow includes knife-wielding street gangs, as some bacteria shoot poison-tipped molecular "daggers" at each other, proving that nothing does awesome violence quite like bacteria. »2/27/12 11:28am 2/27/12 11:28am

Birds, bees, and turtles all possess the ability to navigate by the Earth's magnetic field. Humans might actually possess the exact same magnetism-sensing hardware as these other creatures, as a light-sensitive protein taken from the human eye gave flies magnetovision. »6/21/11 11:40am 6/21/11 11:40am

We usually think of fossil fuels as an energy source, but petroleum is also the raw materials used in all the world's plastics. Now leftover chicken feathers could allow us to keep using plastics in a world after oil. »4/03/11 9:30am 4/03/11 9:30am

The atoms of proteins move around in incredibly complicated ways, but modeling how all those moving parts fit together is vital to understanding biology. Now, thanks to a supercomputer, you can see every step of the process right here. »10/15/10 10:20am 10/15/10 10:20am

This is an image of a cell ripping itself apart, turning itself from one cell into two daughter cells. Scientists have long known what this process looks like, but still know little about many chemical processes that made it happen. In tomorrow's issue of Science, an American research team describes how they… »12/04/08 9:00am 12/04/08 9:00am